We Move Forward
by Twenty questions
Summary: Different LOST one-shots, all unrelated. The first is an Alex story, and the second is a look at the finale for Season 4.
1. Alex, if she didn't die

You are lying in bed, the cold air too depressing for anything else. It won't snow, just more sleet. And though it is a Saturday, she seems antsy, not able to keep still, curl up by your side. This is nothing against you, she is never able to be passive. So you throw a question out, expecting that she will ignore you as normal.

"Have you ever been in love?"

She isn't in love with you, and though you are completely consumed by her you are also able to realize that she may never be in love with you. With anyone.

"Yes."

The surprise on your face is evident. The look on her face is only sad. She makes no move to grab your hand, just continues to look at the popcorn ceiling with ugly stains and talks.

"We were young. Teenagers. Neither of us had ventured outside the world we knew, but we were in love."

You ask what happened, you're personal guess is an unwanted pregnancy. An abortion could have been traumatizing, could have explained her distance.

"He died."

You want to ask how, why. Some small part of you even wonders if she killed him. But you don't ask, you just begin to languidly make love to her, because this is what she wants. You always give her what she wants.

* * *

It is spring, you and are in love with the city again. You want to take her to Powell's, to Voodoo Donut's, to just walk around on the side walks and people watch. Part of you wants to take her down to the beach, a little way off the coast, and just admire her and nature. But when you see her standing in your apartment fingering the family portrait you have on the coffee table you know that today is not the today.

"I don't have any family pictures."

She has never mentioned a family before, and you have never asked before. You assumed that she did not have one.

"I knew my mother for maybe three months total. Once when I was an infant, and once when I was older. She was French, a scientist."

You wonder if she was put up for adoption, if the foster care explains her inability to reach emotional attachments, explains her odd social behaviors. You wonder if she was raised in France, and that was why she was fluent. But no, she said she lived somewhere in the South Pacific.

"I was born on a ship."

This somehow seems natural for her. Even now she lives near a body of water. She craves the water, and a coast vacation seems like an even better idea.

You propose it, and the two of you head down for the weekend. Part of you wants to ask questions, but she never reveals anything unless she wants to. It is part of her charm.

* * *

She is wildly drunk when she decides to mention her father. You are sober, and open the door to reveal her slightly incoherent form. She only drinks after nightmares you know, and she hasn't had as many lately.

"I lived with my father for most of my grow up. But he wasn't my father. Noooooooo. He _stole_ me. As a bay," she hiccups now, "be. That's why I never knew my mother for such a long time."

You move to comfort her. And wonder if she is telling the truth. It all seems so ridiculous. But in all the time you have known her she has yet to lie. You look at her rumpled hair and slightly crazed eyes, and you know that she is telling the truth.

"He let me die. For his own sake."

"You're alive honey, you're perfectly healthy."

Maybe it is just druken ramblings, but at your observation she begins to laugh. You have never seen her like this before. And she won't cry, because she doesn't ever cry, but so much of you wants to cry for her.

"I was dead once."

You pass it off as the shots of whiskey, but she is more sober now. Sipping a cup of coffee that you have brought her. Images of hospitals that you have seen on television flash through your mind. She doesn't belong in that sterile enviroment though, and you can't picture her there no matter how many medical dramas you watch.

"But the place I was at, it healed me. Not my lover, not my mother, I was the only one who was brought back to life. After he left, after they were all gone. I was the only one left."

She still isn't crying, but you're arms are wrapped around her. This is the closest she has ever let you get.

"He doesn't know I'm alive, that I escaped from that place. No one ever remembered how good I was at escaping. At sailing. He let me die."

You murmur into her hair about how its alright.

She falls asleep then, and you lie on the couch and wonder what these horrors are that so obviously haunt her. When she wakes up you will be asleep on the couch and she will leave silently, ashamed at sharing so much. That does not bother you right now.

* * *

The leaves on the trees have started to fall, and she is letting you hold her hand as you walk your dog. You wanted to buy the dog together, to have something to share, but she wasn't ready for that kind of commitment. So you own the dog, and she lets you hold her hand as an apology.

"How'd you end up here?"

Your story is easy, born in Portland, went out of state for college. Couldn't find that same charm in Seattle, and so returned here. Nothing about her is easy though.

"I couldn't stand anything tropical. I managed to make friends with some marine biologists though, and they let me get a ride with them as long as I did housekeeping duties. We ended up in California. I worked the trains, and eventually just took one and got off."

You are pleased that she has answered your question, but feel like there is more to it then that. She has never been to college, how did she manage to fend for herself? There are so many plot holes in your story that you wonder if she was running away from something. Her family doesn't know that she is alive though. And somehow you know that she can survive so many things. This could be one of them.

* * *

Weeks later and the two of you are having dinner at a restaurant. She sees someone and her breath quickens. She trembles. You turn around and follow her line of sight. It is a man, and in the way that he is beautiful you think that she is having an affair. Her eyes are not looking at you in fear though, they are looking at the man.

You recognize the man too, and assume she is star-struck. Sayid is famous, and she could not have had an affair with him without the whole world knowing. So you're anger turns into apprehension which turns into anxiety for her.

"Are you okay?"

For all the seasons that she has been in your life you were hoping to make it back to winter, to have a whole year of this fantastic woman.

"I'll never be able to forgive the man who called himself my father. He didn't care."

You are concerned at this sudden outburst. But looking up you understand that the man she was staring at is behind you.

"He did. He does. He doesn't know you're here Alex." The voice of this man is so soothing but when he says 'Alex' you feel electrified. That isn't her name.

"He thought they were bluffing. You're the only one of us he was ever genuine about. I can take you to him, or I can let you disappear. In a month, he'll know you're alive."

"My life isn't worth bluffing."

She gets up, and begins to walk away from the table. The man returns to his own, the patron's curious stares continue. You follow her, ignoring the fact that you have not yet paid.

"Danielle, what's going on? Are you okay?"

"My name is Alex. Linus or Rousseau, or maybe whatever my biological father's name is. I don't know, but I'm not Danielle Lefkow, and right now I have to go."

She kisses you then, hard and fast, and you don't want to let go. She walks out of the restaurant, you understand that you will never see her again. Somehow that is the least surprising thing of the night. When you return to your table you notice Sayid has left the restaurant.

She may not have returned the feelings, but Danielle or Alex was the love of your life, and it didn't matter what her name was. All you know is that you have been caught in this intricate web and will only be drawn into it further.

You pay the check.


	2. Season 4 finale

**Author's Note: I just had some thoughts going through my head after watching the finale, and decided it worked in this format for me. **

* * *

"Why are you telling me this now?"

But he has that look in his eyes, and she knows. In the weeks that will come she will pause and consider what she was asking. If she thought that this was the end, of her, of him, of all of them, maybe she would have said something else. Or maybe she wouldn't have, because everything about their lives has been timing, and this is simply an extension.

She didn't change though, didn't say anything meaningful, and this haunts her. At the same time, she revels in what it reveals about their relationship, about them. Nothing more can be hoped for.

And she knows that he'll jump, knows that he'll swim to shore. What she doesn't know is that kissing him still feels so good, and even though it is in front of Jack and part of her feels ashamed, guilty, she doesn't stop. He does. He jumps.

Down down Sawyer goes. Up and away Kate goes. She can't bring herself to jump after him, she needs to leave. They promised her she could go. He promises nothing to her.

And then the secret is in her head, but she doesn't doubt. She doesn't try to comprehend. Instead it is neatly filed away and somewhere Jack is saying that they'll go back for him, but Jack and everything is out of her head until they are going down to.

Aaron. Maybe it is a latent maternal instinct. She doubts this, she has killed before, she has gone through too much to be selfless. But she has the urge to save someone, and it isn't herself. When Jack takes her wrist, she knows that she is beyond saving herself, and when later they are bracing for the crash she decides to live. That maybe Sawyer and her won't see each other again, and maybe the last thing she said was sort of rude. But what else would she say?

He had given her the one thing they didn't need, a secret. But she would do this for him, and maybe because she needed to do something.

Sawyer was on an island so far gone, and she was in a raft on the ocean, but there was still in the back of her mind, there was a them. She couldn't go back for him, or for Jack, or for herself. But she could do this for him.

* * *

He is older now, can see it in the other man's eye. A kind of awe and almost disbelief. But that is not what Walt cares about. Locke's message, and the lies of the other survivors, they mystify him. Physical appearance is of little matter with what they're trying to do.

He is lying, since he has been ten. For his father, his father who killed for him. He can not forget, and though it was so long ago, nothing has faded. Nothing will ever fade, because Walt knows that he is not typical. The polar bears clued him in.

Hurley though, Hurley was in a mental institution. This was not how things were supposed to end. No one should have to go back.

Walt wants to go back though. He loves his grandmother, and he is a good person. Will continue to be a good person. But the island is his past, and he knows that it is also his future. His Dad has already gone there, though that isn't what his grandmother has told him.

Some things he just knows. He knows more than they think he does. And though he asks, he knows why they haven't visited. And he wonders if they know it isn't just to protect the _people_ on the island.

* * *

Daniel doesn't know what this. This fog. This all consuming whiteness. And he wants to study it. He needs to make things logical.

Logical is not Charlotte staying to find her birthright. Logical is not the freighter blowing up. So many people dead. He thinks of who he has killed. Jin, Sun, their unborn child. An infant. It is not his fault, he reasons.

Charlotte not coming, being somewhere far from that fog, or maybe inside it, that is his fault. He wonders that they are all connected to this island, that maybe it has claimed her. And though he knows it isn't logical to feel this way, he wants to be claimed too so that he can be with her.

The fog lifts.

* * *

Locke is home. He has never had a home, not in the sense most people consider one. Had never been welcomed home. He has never felt so in control. And as Richard beckons him, he knows that he will never have a greater understanding.

This is destiny.

* * *

Jin is searching for debris to hold onto. He has to live for sun, for their child, but the blast is so strong. The water is warm, and it would so easy for him to sink into it.

* * *

The sight of Penny after so long is like the light at the end of the tunnel.

* * *

The wheel turns.


End file.
